Vindication

Vindication is not a pretty word. Perhaps to be proved right is not something intended to roll easily off the tongue. As a sound, there is acidity to it. Karma on the other hand is almost the opposite, a nice word, whilst meaning almost the same thing. Otherwise I just refer back to my rock psychology, remembering the lilt of 'the same people that you use on the way up.....you might meet up with on the way down'; track four on Little Feat's Dixie Chicken, but written by Alain Toussaint.
You don't get proved right in education, students roll in and they roll out, thats the way it is. You love them but they leave you, and it takes a heavy toll. You never expect a student to turn round and say you were right about this or that, it's just not the way it is. Perhaps that is why David Dunster once said to me, 'remember teaching isn't your real work'. I think he was right, and I certainly took him seriously at the time and have always pursued my own stuff. Teaching is a conduit and it can take up a great deal of your time, but in the end there is nothing but that which leaves in the mind of the student, sometimes to be appreciated years and years later. But what you do outside that becomes a thing of your own. Those who confuse teaching with doing are using teaching to substantiate themselves via an entourage, and whilst we all might have been guilty of that at one time or another, this is probably not such a good idea.
But sometimes you can come home feeling that awkward word; vindicated. I had a student studying housing, he's spent pretty much the whole year studying the hows and whys, and right at the end, in our last tutorial before he hands in his dissertation he said something very beautiful. He said (words to the effect that) he'd spent the whole of his six years studying with me avoiding the subject of Le Corbusier, because he knew it was my thing.....but then added... 'but you know what....the solution is the unite'.
I leapt up and grabbed that Last Works off the book shelf to discuss the section drawings of the Firminy Unite. I could have laughed or I could have cried.
Meanwhile, they are beginning to strike the scaffolding from Yates House, our home in Bethnal Green, and I gaze up in wonderment. All those fucking awful meetings, all the miserable encounters along the way, and Romeo, our construction manager, the last of many many construction managers and the one who has stuck it out and done the job, is now walking around like a cat who's got the cream. I talk to the workmen and thank them from the bottom of my heart! Who could have believed it. Together we resuscitated 1959, and isn't she beautiful.
Sometimes, the struggle is worth it.